Setting Limits Fairly: Learning to Share Resources for Health

The central idea behind this book is that we lack consensus on principles for allocating medical resources -- and in the absence of such a consensus we must develop and rely on a fair decision-making process for setting limits on health care. Daniels and Sabin provide a cogent analysis of the current situation, lucidly review the usual candidate solutions, and describe their own approach. The audience for the book is global since the problem of limited resources cuts across types of health care systems whether or not they have universal coverage.

In its first edition the book stimulated considerable work on setting priorities in health care, both here and abroad. The revision adds new material to the book, including several chapters on new international research data from Mexico and Canada.

Norman Daniels is Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health at Harvard University. James Sabin is a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.